3,000 Miles to Paradise

When we first contemplated a cruising lifestyle, our plan was to buy a sailboat in Seattle, sail down the West Coast to San Diego, and then join the Baha HaHa to Mexico. In reality, we bought a boat in Florida, explored the East Coast and then graduated to the Bahamas, Leeward, and Windward Caribbean Islands.

While in Grenada we had to make a major decision: Do we continue being a “yo-yo” boat going up and down the island chain between the BVIs and Grenada, or do we take the big step of crossing the Caribbean to the Panama Canal? It was very tempting to continue being a yo-yo boat:  safe, convenient, and easy access to parts and repairs. But our hearts said this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and we headed 400 miles west to Bonaire.

The next big decision was to continue to Cartegena, with a reputation as one of the more dangerous passages in the world. It was scary at times but we arrived safely — more or less. Fortunately the next leg was the relatively easy two-day passage to the San Blas and then to Colon, Panama.

After leaving Panama your next stop is the Galapagos, Then it's 3,000 miles of tradewind sailing to the Marquesas.

Once at Colon, you are at a major decision point. It’s not to late to head north up to Roatan, Belize, and Mexico and then back to the BVIs. This is what many boats do, and we respect their decision. After our experience off Columbia, Meryl had some doubts about our continuing to the Pacific. We had some long, soul searching talks about the pluses and minuses of continuing west. A wonderful email from Marce on Escape Velocity (which was dismasted 400 miles off the Galapagos) said: “This is your last chance to do something truly epic in your life. Go for it!”
Soon we were anchored off Panama City provisioning for our longest passage yet, 900 miles to the Galapagos. That turned out to be one of the easiest trips yet in very light winds and calm seas. We could actually walk around the boat without feeling we’d just been mugged. We thought:  This isn’t too bad, how hard can it be to cross the Pacific?

How do you contemplate a 3,000 mile voyage (one of the longest passages in worldwide sailing) across a vast expanse of ocean with no Coast Guard, no VHF radio contact, no nothing? In our hearts we knew the boat was bluewater capable — a well built hull with strong rigging — but what about us? At ages 66 and 67 we are no spring chickens. I guess you’d call it a leap of faith, along with the fact you’re already out in the middle of nowhere so you don’t have much choice in the matter.

I spent six months on and off living with Tryg and his wife Anni while we prepared Flying Cloud for bluewater sailing. Without their help this voyage would have never happened.

Delphine's made the best pizza in all of Atuona.

It was wonderful to be back on a French island where good quality food and delicious baguettes were available. Meryl couldn't get to the fresh fruit and veggie section quick enough after the 18-day passage.

We hedged our bet by inviting long term friend Trygve Johnson to join us for the trip to the Marquesas. Tryg helped us provision, get fuel, and load up 14 5-gal water bottles. As we got ready to leave, reports of rigging and rudder failures began filtering in from boats that left a week earlier. The next day everyone in Isabelle was up their mast checking their rigging.

On May 10 we pulled up a very dirty anchor chain and departed Isla Isabelle under a bright blue sky and steady 15 to 20 knot trade winds from the south east. We had a 30 gal. water bladder tied off under the overturned dingy on our foredeck and 45 extra gallons of water tucked away down below. We pointed the boat at 235 degrees magnetic, set the autopilot, and settled in for the long haul. We had reports from previous boats of very confused seas caused by a southeast swell countered by southeast winds with a northwest swell and soon felt the boat rolling in the big seas.

Our first challenge was wrestling the 265-pound water bladder from it's precarious perch on the leeward rail and getting the precious water stored in containers in the main cabin.

Within a hour, Meryl noticed our expensive bladder under the dingy had inched it’s way leeward and was about to go swimming. Given the size of the waves and the wind it was quite an effort for Tryg and I to go forward, run a hose from a portable water pump, and pump the water into our 5-gal cubes.

Meryl had pre-prepared a lot of meals, but having fresh baked bread underway was a real treat.

With that little drama over, Meryl went down below to make dinner. You develop very healthy appetites while at sea. She had pre-prepared about 10 days of meals, since cooking down below in raucous seas is a exercise in masochism. Meryl oversaw the galley but was pleased with all the assistance in preparing meals as well as clean-up by Tryg and Walter. It made such a difference when you consider (18x3=54) that is a lot of meals!  After a great BBQ chicken dinner, we settled into our 3-hour watch schedule, with me taking the first watch until 10:00 pm and Meryl and Tryg sleeping down below. We’re not set up for two people off watch so we had to experiment a little. It was too bumpy for Tryg to sleep in the guest berth so we took the cushion off and laid it on the leeward floor next to the settee seat that serves as our sea berth. With Meryl on the upper and Tryg on the lower it was a little like summer camp with the two of them with a “chatty good night”. At 10:00 pm Meryl relieved me and I crawled into the hot bunk she had just vacated; we just changed pillows. At 1:00 am Tryg came on watch, followed by me again at 4:00 am for the dog watch.

We quickly learned that Tryg's normal berth in the mid cabin wasn't going to work in the heavy seas so we moved his mattress to the lowest point on the boat. At time it was like summer camp with Meryl and Tryg chatting away into the late night hours.

We’ve written a lot about night watches. You basically have to watch the horizon for lights on ships, check our AIS system for any large ships, and hope the fishing boats (who don’t use AIS) have their lights on. You really can’t see any debris in the water at night so you try to not think about Robert Redford and half sunken containers, etc. Other than that you listen to audiobooks or podcasts and scan the horizon every 20 minutes when the timer on your iPhone goes off.  We had plenty of wind, usually around 12 to 18 knots, and you become used to the syncopated sounds of the boat and the roaring of the 5- to 10-foot waves as they rushed by the boat. Every once in a while a wave would hit the boat at a wrong angle and splash some water into the cockpit. Down below the noise was muted, but you could still feel the motion of the boat and become hyper aware if that motion suddenly changed.

In the morning we’d usually have breakfast together, usually Cheerios or corn flakes but sometimes scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast. I would do the early morning radio net, charting the positions of the four boats ahead of us and noting their wind speeds, directions and swell heights. You’d sometimes get a snippet gossip about a fish caught, a problem with the boat, or news of other boats further west.  We found it a nice way to keep in touch for safety reasons as well as companionship. When you see only three ships in 18 days it’s great to know others are out there with you just ahead or just behind if a problem should arise.

Every day at 10 am ( 24 hour period) Meryl would record our lat and long positions, boat speed, course over ground, and chart our position on our paper chart.  It was nice to see our progress each day and see the miles add up as we inched our way closer and closer to our destination. This helped us stay focused and delineate the seemingly endless repetitive days at sea.  We recorded over 170 miles a number of days and averaged around 155 miles a day over all.  Each evening during dinner in the cockpit we would toast to “Team Conner” and another  successful Day of good sailing and teamwork.  It always brought big smiles to our faces before we started another night of watches.

Having a third person aboard for this long passage made life much easier for Meryl and I. We could finally get enough sleep that we weren't wiped out all the time.

During the day we would try to read, but it was usually too windy, so we’d just talk. We talked about everything under the sun, some mundane, some repetitive, some personal, and some sensitive subjects. Two weeks 24 x 7 is a long time to spend with people, even if they are your spouse or a close friend. We learned a lot more about each other.

You also can get rather feral on a long passage, so every other day we would shower in the cockpit. Tryg would go first, then Meryl and I. The method was to get a half gallon of salt water and pour it over your head, soap up with a special salt water soap, shampoo your hair, then a rinse with salt water (which wasn’t that warm and sent a little yelp from your voice as it rushed down your body.) Then Meryl would take a little half gallon pressurized garden mister and spray fresh water on me and I’d return the favor. That way we would get get three showers using as little at one half gallon of our precious fresh water supply. It worked amazingly well and we all felt so good after our “showers.”

We didn't get a picture of our first fish, a mahi mahi, but we did capture this black fin tuna we caught several days later. This little guy feed three of us for about three days.

After about four days Tryg and I took a try at fishing. I had bought an ocean grade fishing pole loaded with 80 pound line and stainless steel leader. We’d let out about 100 yards of line and watch the lure, usually resembling a squid, dancing on the surface. We were going six to seven knots, which isn’t exactly trolling speed, but we’d heard fish would strike at those speeds. Our first few days were a bust, but on day three we suddenly heard the line zinging out with a loud whistling sound. I had to jump up, find my sandals, put on a safety tether, and work my way back along the pitching deck to the pole. Just getting it out of it’s holder was a challenge. Then I had to figure out how to set the drag and start reeling in the fish. At seven knots it’s a battle just getting the lure back in, but this first fish didn’t seem to be putting up a huge fight. As we got closer I could see it was a small mahi mahi. I was a little disappointed but once we got him on board we realized their was enough meat for several meals. Since neither Tryg or I was a fisherman, figuring out how to clean the fish on the pitching deck of the boat was a challenge. We eventually got several fillets cut and Meryl got them in plastic bags and into the freezer. We high-fived each other, knowing that real fisherman would laugh at our meager catch.

Every morning I would put on a safety harness and walk the decks checking the rigging and lines for chafe and other issues. Typically there would be five or six flying fish laying on the deck along with one or two squid.

Each morning I would put on a safety line and walk forward along the deck, throwing dead flying fish and squid overboard and carefully checking all our standing and running rigging. One morning I discovered that our roller fuller line was chafing (which had happened twice before), but now I could see exactly where it was chafing on the stanchion block just after the line exited the roller drum. The block was simply too small for the line and its metal edges chafed the line over time. I replaced it with a larger block, but had no way to anchor it in the exact position, so we improvised (we do that a lot) and got a somewhat fair lead. 

My feeling was that most of the rigging failures on the other boats were due to the very confused seas we were sailing in, causing the boat to pitch every which way and putting shock load on the rigging. Every morning I held my breath as I checked everything I was capable of checking. Meryl expressed a concern about our solar array, perched over the davits on the stern of the boat where you could see some movement so we went back and tensioned some line in an X pattern to add a little structural strength. We also had a problem with our solar panels not charging. I fixed it by replugging in the network cable, but it was an intermittent problem for about a week and forcing us to run the motor to charge the batteries.  With this kind of continuous preventive attention we hoped to avert small problems from becoming bigger problems

I had ordered a docking station for our sat phone so we could hook up an external antenna and not have to sit on the edge of the boat to use the phone. Unfortunately, they forgot to ship the power cable and the mounting bracket so we couldn’t take advantage of our new antenna (it won’t plug directly into the phone). I did manage to use the sat phone to upload/download emails which was much more convenient (and much more expensive) then using our SSB radio.  The problem with the SSB radio is you had to try and make a connection with a shore station, usually in Panama, Trinidad, or Corpus Christy (during the first part of the voyage). You’d have to call each one separately, and try over four different frequencies to see if it would connect. That was great when the first station connected but a pain when you had to try four or five different stations on various frequencies. With the sat phone you just dialed using the computer and it would connect with the satellite (most times). It only took a minute to download most stuff whereas the SSB/SailMail connection could take up to 20 minutes. But again, the SailMail connection time was free and the sat phone was not.

After 18 days at sea the mountains of Hiva Oa were a very welcome sight.

Early in morning of May 28 I could make out a mass of clouds ahead. I’d been somewhat cautious of landfalls every since the Galapagos when our electronic charting system showed us anchored on land. My fear approaching Hiva Oa was we’d hit it in the dark before actually seeing it, but luckily as the sunrise slowly illuminated the sky I could make out the outlines of the mountains peaks of Hiva Oa, located exactly where the chart said it would be. Tryg had gotten up early just to see the landfall; it was a amazing sight to know you’d made it after crossing 3,000 miles of desolate open ocean. 

Taahuku Bay is relatively small and typically packed with boats. A stern anchor is mandatory when you are anchored this close together.

Sailing into Taahuku Bay, located about one-half way down the south side of Hiva Oa, was a little like sailing into a short Norwegian fiord. The emerald green mountain peaks towered on all sides dwarfing the harbor in comparison. A large breakwater comes out from the right side and once you round the corner you realize what a small harbor it really is. A fellow cruiser described it as the “harbor from hell” given the fact you have to anchor very close to other boats, and therefore deploy a stern anchor to keep you from swinging in the confined space. Luckily our friends French Curve were just pulling up their anchor and we swung in behind them into the perfect anchoring location, far enough back in the bay to be out of the worst of the swell but far enough forward to not share the waves with the surfers.

Boxing Kangaroo, a Belgium boat with a young couple on board, was nice enough to come over and assist with our very heavy stern anchor, which we had never deployed. We handed him the huge Fortress anchor and began feeding out over 100 ft. of ⅜” chain as he tried to motor his small dingy backwards, but eventually the weight of the chain was stronger than his dingy could pull, so down went the anchor.

It felt ever so good to be finally in a safe harbor after 18 days at sea, it’s a feeling we only now can fully understand as long distance sailors.  Firstly, and most importantly, to have made it safe and sound, secondly, with no major equipment failures (kudos to our Auto Pilot that steered all 18 days without a hitch!), and thirdly, we were all still talking to each other!   

We tried contacting our agent, but found the Marquesas were on a weird +9 ½ hour time difference so our appointment with her was late. We dinghied Tryg ashore so he could try to reserve a flight from Hiva Oa to Tahiti, and we set out on the Herculean task of trying to get the boat back to rights after such a long passage. Just airing it out was the first priority.

On Friday we finally connected with Sandra, our agent, who collected our papers and drove us the 3 ½ miles into Atuona to the Gendarme. Check in was as simple as filling out a one page form and handing over our passports for the entry stamp. Following that Tryg went across the street to the Air Tahiti Nui office to try again and get a ticket, apparently the computer system had been down the day before.

Shopping for presents and essentials.

Atuona is a relatively small village with one main road that curves around and heads up into the mountains. There are a couple of small magasins (grocery stores) on the main road, but their hours seem variable at best. Meryl and I walked around the corner on the main road and about one block up on the left was the main grocery store which had an very good supply of French-based foods, and more important, fresh baguettes and and soft serve ice cream machine. We stocked up on French cheeses, yogurt, baguettes, fruits, and vegetables and began the long walk back to the boat at Taahuku Bay.

Meryl fixed a great dinner and we all had our first full night’s sleep (in 18 days) in our own berths. Wonderful!